The Fly (1986 film)
The Fly is a 1986 Academy-award winning science fiction, body-conscious horror film written and directed by David Cronenberg. Produced by Brooksfilms and 20th Century Fox, the film stars Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, and John Getz. It is a big-budget remake of the classic 1958 film of the same name, though it shares little in common with the original film's plot. It captured the then-blossoming real-life love affair on-screen between Goldblum and Davis. It was also notable for introducing into the cultural lexicon the famous line "Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid", the film and said theme becoming seen by some critics as a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic.Summer Shocks 1986: The Flyhttp://www.jstor.org/pss/1566526 The soundtrack was composed by Howard Shore. Plot At a meet-the-press party held by Bartok Science Industries, Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum), a brilliant but eccentric scientist, meets Veronica Quaife (Geena Davis), a journalist for Particle magazine. Bartok Science Industries provides the funding for Brundle's work, and he tells Veronica that he's working on a project that will change the world. Intrigued, Veronica accompanies Brundle back to his warehouse laboratory/home so he can show her his invention: a set of "Telepods" that allows instantaneous teleportation of an object from one pod to another. Veronica is impressed and eventually agrees to document Seth's work. Although the telepods can transport inanimate objects perfectly, they do not work correctly on living things. Seth unintentionally experiences this horrific fact when he attempts to teleport a baboon, which is killed when it is reintegrated inside-out. Shortly thereafter, Seth and Veronica begin a romantic relationship, and their first sexual encounter provides inspiration for Seth. He realizes that the machine is not perfectly reassembling living objects, but is rather "interpreting" them, and sets about reprogramming the telepod computer to cope with living flesh. Seth then succeeds in teleporting a second baboon with no apparent harm. Flush with this success, he wants to spend a romantic evening with Veronica, but she leaves before they can celebrate. Brundle's judgment soon becomes impaired by alcohol and his paranoid fear that Veronica is secretly rekindling her relationship with her editor and former lover Stathis Borans (John Getz). In reality, Veronica has left to confront Stathis about his continuing interference in her life, and his threat to reveal the existence of the telepods to the world prematurely. Unaware of all this, a drunk and jealous Brundle decides to teleport himself, both as a way of getting back at Veronica for her imagined infidelity, and also to provide the teleportation system with its first human subject. Just before the telepod door automatically closes, a common housefly slips into the pod, unseen by the distracted Brundle. After being teleported, Brundle emerges from the receiving pod, seemingly normal. Shortly after his teleportation, Seth reconciles with Veronica, and eventually begins to exhibit a sense of intoxicating euphoria, as well as heightened strength, endurance, and sexual potency. However, he also becomes arrogant and violent, and when Veronica sees that something has gone wrong and refuses to allow herself to be teleported, Brundle abandons her, claiming that she cannot "keep up" with him. Brundle then meets a voluptuous and sleazy woman named Tawny at a bar, and arm wrestles with a burly man named Marky, with Tawny as the prize. After using his superhuman strength to give Marky's arm a compound fracture, Brundle takes Tawny home for the night. The next morning, Veronica arrives at the warehouse in time to prevent Brundle from forcibly teleporting Tawny. After Tawny runs away, Veronica tries to warn Brundle that something is happening to him, but he throws her out of his warehouse and tells her never to return. After she leaves, Brundle is horrified to discover that his fingernails are beginning to fall off. Realizing that something went wrong during his first teleportation, Brundle checks his computer's records, and discovers that the telepod computer, confused by the presence of two separate life-forms in the sending pod, has merged him with the fly at the molecular-genetic level. He then realizes that he is slowly becoming a hybrid creature that is neither human nor insect (which the doomed Seth begins referring to as "Brundlefly"). After a month-long period of self-imposed isolation, a desperate Seth again reconciles with Veronica, but he has already begun to deteriorate, becoming progressively less human in appearance. He also begins to exhibit fly-like characteristics, such as vomiting digestive enzymes onto his food in order to dissolve it, and developing the ability to cling to walls and ceilings. He also develops fly-like twitches and tics, and begins leaving his sloughed-off human body parts in his medicine cabinet, dubbing it "The Brundle Museum of Natural History". Brundle comes to realize that he is losing his human reason and compassion, and that he is now being driven by primitive impulses he cannot control. To her horror, Veronica learns that she is pregnant by Seth, and she cannot be sure if the child was conceived before or after his fateful teleportation. After having a nightmare in which she gives birth to a giant maggot, Veronica becomes determined to get an abortion. Although Veronica visits Brundle to tell him about her pregnancy, she can't bring herself to do so. Outside Brundle's warehouse, Veronica begs Stathis to take her to a clinic so she can get an abortion, but Brundle overhears their discussion while watching them from the rooftop. Brundle then abducts Veronica from the clinic, and begs her to carry the child to term, since it could potentially be the last remnant of his untainted humanity. Veronica refuses, afraid that the child will be a hideous mutant. Brundle takes her back to his warehouse. Meanwhile, Stathis breaks into the lab with a shotgun and comes to Veronica's rescue, but is seriously injured and nearly killed by the almost fully-transformed Brundle, who dissolves Stathis' left hand and right foot with his corrosive vomit-drop enzyme. Stathis is spared from death only by the pleading of Veronica. Brundle then reveals his desperate, last-ditch plan to Veronica: He will use the three telepods (the third pod being the original prototype) to fuse himself, Veronica, and their unborn child together into one entity, so they can be the "ultimate family", which the desperate Brundle believes will be "more human than I am alone". Veronica frantically resists Brundle's efforts to drag her into Telepod 1 and then accidentally tears off his jaw, triggering his final transformation. His body sheds its outer layer of decaying flesh, revealing a monstrous combination of man and insect. The now-mute "Brundlefly" creature traps Veronica inside Telepod 1, then steps into Telepod 2. As the computer's timer counts down to the activation of the fusion sequence, the wounded Stathis manages to shoot the power cables connected to Veronica's telepod with his shotgun, severing Telepod 1's connection to the computer and allowing Veronica to escape unharmed. Brundlefly attempts to break out of its own telepod just as the fusion sequence occurs, and is gruesomely fused with chunks of metal and other components from Telepod 2. As the mortally-wounded Brundlefly-telepod fusion creature crawls out of the receiving pod, it silently begs Veronica to end its suffering with Borans' shotgun. A devastated Veronica hesitates for a moment, and then pulls the trigger, ending the life of her hideously-transformed lover. Production history In the early 1980s, co-producer Kip Ohman approached screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue with the idea of remaking the classic science fiction/horror film The Fly. Pogue began by reading George Langelaan's short story and then watching the original film, which he had never seen. Deciding that this was a project he was interested in, he talked with producer Stuart Cornfeld about setting up the production, and Cornfeld very quickly agreed. The duo then pitched the idea to executives at 20th Century Fox and received an enthusiastic response, and Pogue was given money to write a first draft screenplay. He initially wrote an outline similar to that of Langelaan's story, but both he and Cornfeld thought that it would be better to rework the material to focus on a gradual metamorphosis instead of an instantaneous monster. But when executives read the script they were so unimpressed that they immediately withdrew from the project. After some negotiation, Cornfeld orchestrated a deal whereby Fox would agree to distribute the film if he could set up financing through another source. The new producer was Mel Brooks, who had previously worked with Cornfeld on David Lynch's film The Elephant Man, produced by Brooks' company Brooksfilms. Cornfeld gave the script to Brooks, who liked it but felt that a different writer was needed. Pogue was then removed from the project and Cornfeld hired Walon Green for a rewrite, but it was felt that his draft was not a step in the right direction, so Pogue was then brought back to try and polish up the material. At the same time, Brooks and Cornfeld were trying to find a suitable director. Their first choice was David Cronenberg, but he was working on an adaptation of Total Recall for Dino De Laurentiis and was unable to accept. Cornfeld decided on a young British director named Robert Bierman after seeing one of his short films. Bierman was flown to Los Angeles to meet with Pogue, and the film was in the very early stages of preproduction when tragedy struck. Bierman's family had been vacationing in South Africa and his daughter was killed in an accident. Bierman boarded a plane to go to his family, and Brooks and Cornfeld waited for a month before approaching him about resuming work on the picture. Bierman told them that he was unable to start working so soon, and Brooks told him that he would wait three months and contact him again. At the end of the three months, Bierman told him that he could not commit to the project. Brooks told him that he had understood and had freed him from his contract. Cornfeld then heard that Cronenberg was no longer associated with Total Recall and once again approached him with The Fly. Cronenberg agreed to sign on as director if he would be allowed to rewrite the script. His revised draft differed greatly from Pogue's screenplay, though it still retained the basic plot outline and also included the central concept of a genetic mutation. With a script that everyone was now happy with, Cronenberg assembled his usual crew and began the process of casting the picture, ultimately deciding on Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis for the leads. Chris Walas, who had designed the creatures in Gremlins, was hired to handle the film's extensive special effects. Filming took place in Toronto in 1985–1986. The producers also commissioned Bryan Ferry to record a song for the film for promotional purposes. The resulting track was entitled "Help Me". A music video was made for the song, and footage from the film was featured heavily in it. On the DVD's commentary track Cronenberg admitted to liking the song, but felt that it was inappropriate to the film itself. Brooks and Cornfeld originally wanted to play the song over the closing credits, but after Cronenberg screened it for them they agreed with the director that it did not mesh with the movie. As a result, the song is featured only briefly in the film, in the background during the scene where Brundle challenges Marky in the bar. "Help Me" quickly disappeared and became extremely rare, as it was not included on the film's soundtrack release. It resurfaced in 1993 on the Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry compact disc Ultimate Collection. Deleted/Alternate scenes After filming ended early in 1986, a rough cut of the The Fly was shown to 20th Century Fox executives, who were very impressed. A rough cut was then previewed at Toronto's Uptown Theatre in the Spring of that year. Due to a strong audience reaction, the graphic and infamous "monkey-cat" sequence was cut from the film to make it easier for audiences to maintain more sympathy for Brundle's character. Another preview screening was subsequently held at the Fox lot in Los Angeles, and this version featured the "Butterfly Baby" coda. As before, the screening results dictated that the scene be cut. As with most of David Cronenberg's movies, The Fly was tightly edited to maintain a strong pace and to downplay the gratuitous gore. The final cut runs a brisk 95 minutes, and although very few scenes were cut, many others were trimmed down. The DVD and Blu-Ray editions of the film feature both the shooting script and a great deal of deleted, extended, and alternate footage which had never been seen before. The most notable deleted/alternate scenes include: ;Second Interview : A short scene that features Veronica Quaife conducting a videotaped interview with Seth Brundle (after his superhuman exercise seen in the completed film), in which he mistakenly theorizes that being teleported has somehow improved him (a slightly different version of this scene appears in The Fly II, which contains alternate takes and dialogue that was deleted from the workprint version that appears on the DVD). ;Monkey-Cat :A legendary sequence in which a desperate Brundle (in a transitional makeup stage that appears only in this scene), uses the Telepods to merge an alley cat and a baboon (the same baboon that Brundle successfully teleported earlier in the film) together in an attempt to find a cure for his condition. However, the resulting "monkey-cat" creature comes out of the receiving Telepod terribly deformed and in unendurable pain, and attacks Brundle, who ends up beating the two-headed creature to death with a metal pipe to end its misery. The sequence goes on to show the disturbed Brundle scaling the wall of his lab up to the roof, only to feel a sharp pain in his left side (specifically, in the hernia-like bulge seen in the final cut of the film when Brundle first demonstrates his wall-crawling powers). He accidentally slips off the roof, slides down the wall, lands on a metal awning, and watches as a small, fly-like leg emerges from his torso. Horrified by this new appendage, Brundle amputates it with his teeth. : Brundle's motivation for fusing the two animals together was intended to be somewhat ambiguous in the context of the sequence, which featured a "test run" for Brundle's fusion "cure" seen at the end of the movie. Thematically, the point of the scene was that Brundle was trying to find some kind of cure for his rapidly deteriorating condition, but was clearly losing his sanity at the same time. The end of the sequence also revealed exactly what the hernia-like bulge on Brundle's torso was, as well as revealing the final fate of the surviving baboon, story points that are both left unresolved in the final cut. : As noted, this sequence was included in the rough cut shown at the Toronto preview screening. The audience had a strong reaction, with at least one person allegedly throwing up. The general consensus from the preview audience was that Brundle was being cruel to the animals (and thus the scene played as being gratuitous, which was not the filmmakers' intent), and, as a result, they lost sympathy for him for the duration of the film. The scene was cut, and remained lost for nearly 20 years. For the 2005 DVD, the scene was restored from the original negative (which was editorially conformed to the workprint version), with tracked-in sound effects and music taken from the completed film. : The script additionally called for Brundle to encounter a homeless woman in the alley after amputating the insect leg, whose face he would vomit on and consume, but this segment was written out of the movie before filming, although an actress had already been hired to play the baglady. The scripted sequence appears on the DVD. ;Butterfly Baby : The film's deleted epilogue was shot four different ways (all of which can be seen on the DVD). In the version of the scene that was originally scripted (and previewed for the Los Angeles test audience), Veronica Quaife is seen in bed with Stathis Borans (having married him) some time after Seth Brundle's death. She awakens from another nightmare in which she gives birth to Brundle's child, and Stathis reassures her that she is safe, and that the baby she is now carrying (having presumably aborted Brundle's) is his. Veronica then falls back to sleep, and we see that she is now dreaming of a beautiful human baby with butterfly wings hatching from a cocoon and flying off towards a distant light source. : The other filmed versions of the epilogue featured: :*Veronica in bed with Stathis (much the same as the version that was previewed), but without her being pregnant. Instead, Stathis reassures her that "there's no baby". She then falls back to sleep and has the butterfly-baby dream. :*Veronica waking up alone and in her own bed, then falling back to sleep and having the butterfly-baby dream. In this version, she is clearly still pregnant with Brundle's baby. :*Veronica waking up alone and in her own bed, then having the butterfly-baby dream. In this version, she's not visibly pregnant (thus leaving the ending ambiguous). :The epilogue was intended as a upbeat bookend for Veronica's earlier maggot-baby dream, and to give the surviving characters a more hopeful ending. However, the coda did not fare well with the preview audience, since they were too stunned by the film's climax to focus on the coda, which raised a number of questions. Further, due to the dynamics between the characters that evolved during filming, the chemistry between Brundle and Ronnie proved so strong that no one wanted to see her end up with Stathis Borans (which is one reason why the alternate, Borans-less versions of the coda were shot). The filmmakers also agreed that the story should end with Brundle's mercy-killing at Veronica's hands, despite the unanswered questions about Veronica's unborn child that would be raised by the deletion of the epilogue. The climax of the film also went through several incarnations in the various drafts of the script before the final version was filmed: In one early version of the ending, Veronica is unconscious after Brundlefly throws her into Telepod 1. When the Brundlething emerges from the prototype telepod, the raging and mortally wounded creature crawls toward the injured Stathis Borans, who manages to grab a loose wire jutting from the telepod/human/fly-hybrid creature's back and jams it into an electrical socket. The Brundlething is liquified by the electricity. A later version of the scene is nearly identical, except that the Brundlething crawls toward Stathis (whether it wants to attack him or is just desperate for help is left ambiguous) and then dies. In the version of the script that appears on the 2005 DVD, Veronica is conscious during the final scene, and when the Brundlething emerges from the receiving telepod and crawls toward her, she aims Stathis' shotgun at it, but the creature ends up dying at her feet. Eventually, this was slightly changed to the mercy-killing seen in the completed film. Makeup/creature effects The Academy Award-winning makeup seen in The Fly was designed and executed by Chris Walas, Inc. over a period of several months. The final "Brundlefly" creature was designed first, and then the various steps needed to carry protagonist Seth Brundle to that final incarnation were designed afterwards. The transformation was intended to be a metaphor for the aging process. Indeed, Brundle loses hair, teeth, and fingernails, and his skin becomes discolored and lumpy. The intention of the filmmakers was to give Brundle a bruised, cancerous, and diseased look that gets progressively worse as time goes on. Various looks were tested for the different stages before the perfected versions seen in the completed film were arrived at. Some early test footage can be seen on the 2005 The Fly: Collector's Edition DVD. Early versions of the different makeup stages include: *A prototype of Stage 2, featuring more exaggerated facial discoloration, open sores, and peeling skin (test footage of this version can be seen on the Fly CE DVD). *The first test version of Stage 4-A, which featured the same face sculpt as the final version of the makeup, but also had an enlarged headpiece underneath Goldblum's wig. The "hernia-bulge" on his side is in a lower position on his torso than the final version, and only Brundle's face and hands are visibly mutated (also, the sticky pads on his palms are different colors than the metallic-green pads seen in the final film). The rest of Goldblum's body is discolored with body makeup, and there are numerous insect-like hairs on his arms and torso. In the final version of the makeup seen in the film, Brundle's entire body is lumpy and deformed (test footage of this version can be seen on the Fly CE DVD). *There may also be another version of Stage 4-A (which can be seen in nearly all of the publicity and still photos of that stage). This version appears to have slightly different arm appliances (with less distorted hands and the lighter-colored palm-pads of the first prototype), and more hair on Brundle's head (which actually seems to coordinate better with Stage 4-B, since Stage 4-B appears to have more hair than the filmed version of Stage 4-A). It is unclear if this really is a prototype, since most photographs of this version indicate that it was filmed on the set. The apparent differences between the "prototype" and the filmed version may be mere optical illusions created by different lighting schemes and film stocks. The following is a breakdown of each stage of Seth Brundle's horrifying transformation as designed and created by the CWI crew (with behind-the-scenes information presented in italics) The Fly Papers, Tim Lucas, Cinefex Magazine, 1986: * STAGE 1 (on view in the scene where Veronica discovers the small insect-like hairs on Brundle's back): Brundle's face is discolored, and it looks as though he has a bad allergic rash. Small insect-like hairs are growing out of the scratches on his back (an injury sustained prior to Brundle's fateful teleportation when he accidentally rolled onto a stray circuit board). Actor Jeff Goldblum's face was painted with dabs of blue, red, green, yellow, and purple makeup. The fly-like hairs growing from the scratches on Brundle's back were made from monofilament fishing wire that was trimmed, tapered, and tinted black. * STAGE 2 (on view from the scene where the manic Brundle storms the city's streets and then enters the bar until the point where he discovers the truth about his fusion with the fly by checking his computer's records): It looks as though Brundle has a bad case of acne, as his face is full of what appear to be pimples, warts and bumps (and more lesions appear on his face as time goes on). There are also some small fly-like hairs growing out of various areas of his face. Many more such hairs are growing out of the scratches on his back. Brundle's entire body is becoming subtly discolored, and his fingers are swollen, blotchy, and have loose nails. Plastic warts and pimples were applied to Goldblum's face. He wore foam-rubber fingertips for the nail-pulling scene. * STAGE 3 (on view in the scene where Veronica visits Brundle after his one-month period of isolation): Brundle's face is lumpy and discolored. His hair is thinning (with visible bald spots) and he has no eyebrows. He must now walk with the aid of a pair of canes (as a result of the changes to the internal structure of his body) and vomits digestive enzymes on his food in order to dissolve it. His right ear falls off in this stage. Goldblum wore a full face/neck foam-rubber appliance with wig. The "vomit drop" was made from eggs, honey, and milk. * STAGE 4-A (on view in the scene where Brundle demonstrates his wall-crawling and "vomit-drop" abilities to Veronica): Brundle has lost all of his fingernails and toenails, as well as both ears. More of his hair has fallen out, and his teeth are crooked (with receding gums). His face and arms are lumpy and deformed, and coarse insect-like hairs are popping up all over his body. A hernia-like bulge has developed on the lower left side of his torso. Sticky, cushion-like pads have appeared on Brundle's hands and feet, giving him the ability to cling to walls. The index and middle fingers of his right hand are webbed together with a flap of flesh, and are starting to fuse together. Some of the toes on Brundle's feet are clustering and fusing together. Brundle's inner structure has changed enough so that he no longer needs to walk with the aid of canes, and his natural posture is now hunched-over and inhuman. He has also begun to exhibit nervous and jerky fly-like twitches and tics. Goldblum wore foam rubber appliances on his head, neck, arms, feet, and abdomen. Various pieces of foam were put under his clothes to suggest a misshapen form underneath. He also wore another wig with sparse hair, and custom-made dentures to show Brundle's crooked teeth. * STAGE 4-B (''not seen in the final cut of the film; appears only in the deleted "Monkey-Cat"/insect leg-amputation sequence that can be seen on the 2005 Fly Collector's Edition DVD''): Essentially the same as Stage 4-A, but now Brundle is completely naked. He has lost his genitals, his buttocks have fused together, and his hips have become enlarged. The hernia-like bulge on his side is very noticeable now, and eventually bursts open to reveal a small, fly-like appendage that is messily amputated by the horrified Brundle. This stage used the same sculpting for the face and arms as the Stage 4-A makeup appliances did, but since the scene revealed the entirety of Brundle's deformed body, Goldblum was required to wear the first of two full-body, foam-rubber bodysuits designed for the film. * STAGE 5 (on view from the point where Brundle loses his teeth up until the moment when his jaw is ripped off): Brundle is nearing the end of his metamorphosis. His hair is almost entirely gone, and his head has become swollen and misshapen, with his face becoming even more deformed with each passing day. The right eyelid is puffed up and the left eye is enlarged. The index and middle fingers on Brundle's right hand have fused together, and the pinky fingers of both hands are "dead" and vestigial. The middle finger of the left hand has swollen grotesquely. Brundle loses a number of teeth in this stage, and the open wound on his torso (from the deleted "Monkey-Cat" sequence) is clearly visible. Goldblum wore a second full-body suit similar to the one seen in Stage 4-B, but this version featured more exaggerated deformities. Goldblum also wore special dentures with missing teeth and custom-made contact lenses that made one eye appear bigger than the other. The most complete makeup job in the film, this stage took nearly six hours to apply to the actor. The shots of Brundle's jaw flexing in a non-human way so as to vomit corrosive enzymes on Stathis Borans, as well as the shots of Brundle's jaw being ripped off, were accomplished with mechanized, full-bust puppet replicas of the character. In a shot deleted from the film, Brundle ejects an eight-inch proboscis to suck up the remains of Borans' foot, a sequence that also used a mechanized bust. This was the last stage of Brundlefly's transformation to involve actor Jeff Goldblum. * STAGE 6 (seen when Brundlefly tosses Veronica into Telepod 1 and then steps into Telepod 2): Brundle's dead and decaying outer layer of skin falls off to reveal his final incarnation, the entity previously dubbed "Brundlefly" by the diseased scientist. This grotesque, human-insect hybrid creature has a misshapen head with antennae, insect eyes with enlarged eyelids, and a proboscis. The torso is somewhat segmented, like an insect's, and the hips are enlarged and deformed. The right leg reverses its joint to become reverse-bending and Brundle's dead human foot is shaken loose. The creature's new, hoof-like foot ends in a pair of insect claws. The left leg is vaguely humanoid, but there is an extra joint beneath the knee, and the foot consists of three large, deformed toes that are tipped by insect claws. The left arm is humanoid, and terminates in a deformed, human-type hand with stubby, vestigial fingers. The right arm features a distorted and elongated hand that has two long, tubular fingers (which are also tipped with insect claws), and a small, fly-like leg (similar to the leg that burst out of Brundle's left side in the deleted "Monkey-Cat" scene) can be seen on the right side of the creature's torso. This ultimate fusion of man and insect was brought to life through the use of various cable-controlled and rod-operated puppets. * "STAGE" 7 (seen in ''The Fly's final moments, after Brundlefly is merged with a section of Telepod 2''): When Brundlefly's desperate attempt to merge with Veronica Quaife goes awry, the creature is accidentally fused with a large chunk of Telepod 2. The resulting mish-mash of man, insect, and machine crawls out of the receiving pod, mortally wounded and in terrible agony. The thing that was once Seth Brundle silently begs Veronica to end its life, and she does. This final incarnation of Seth Brundle, technically not a part of his metamorphosis into Brundlefly, was dubbed the "Brundlething" or "Brundlebooth" by the film's crew (and is also called "BrundlePod" by some fans). The pathetic creature was created as a rod puppet with cable-controlled facial features. Critical response and cultural impact Upon its release, The Fly was critically acclaimed, as was Goldblum's tour de force performance. Despite being a gory remake of a classic made by a controversial, non-mainstream director, the film was a huge commercial success, the biggest of Cronenberg's career, and was the top-grossing film in the United States for two weeks, earning a total domestic gross of $40,456,565. Audiences reacted strongly to the graphic creature effects and the tragic love story, and the film received much attention at the time of its release. David Cronenberg was surprised when The Fly became embraced as a cultural metaphor for AIDS and, although he accepted this interpretation, he originally intended the film to be a more general analogy for disease itself, terminal conditions like cancer, and more, specifically, the aging process: "If you, or your lover, has AIDS, you watch that film and of course you'll see AIDS in it, but you don't have to have that experience to respond emotionally to the movie and I think that's really its power...This is not to say that AIDS didn't have an incredible impact on everyone and of course after a certain point people were seeing AIDS stories everywhere so I don't take any offense that people see that in my movie. For me, though, there was something about The Fly story that was much more universal to me: aging and death--something all of us have to deal with."''http://www.filmfreakcentral.net/notes/dcronenbergretrointerview.htm''Cronenberg on Cronenberg, Chris Rodley, Faber & Faber, 1997 The Fly DVD audio commentary, 20th Century Fox, 2005 David Cronenberg Tries Opera Film critic Gene Siskel named The Fly as the tenth best film of 1986. In 1989, Premiere and American Film magazines both conducted independent polls of American film critics, directors, and other such groups to determine the best films of the 1980s, and The Fly appeared on both lists. The "Brundlefly" makeup effects won an Academy Award in 1987, the film's sole nomination. Many fans and critics at the time thought that Jeff Goldblum's performance would receive a Best Actor Oscar nomination, but this did not come to pass. Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel subsequently voiced their opinion that he'd been cheated by the lack of nomination. The Fly also won multiple Saturn Awards for Best Horror Film, Best Actor (Jeff Goldblum), and Best Makeup (Chris Walas), BAFTA awards for Best Makeup and Best Special Effects, and was nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. In 2005, Time magazine film critics Richard Corliss and Richard Schickel included The Fly in their list of the All-TIME 100 Greatest Movies, Time later named it one of the 25 best horror films.Top 25 Horror Movies The film was ranked #33 on Bravo's 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Similarly, the Chicago Film Critics Association named The Fly the 32nd scariest film ever made. In 2008, the American Film Institute distributed ballots to 1,500 directors, critics, and other people associated with the film industry in order to determine the top ten American films in ten different genre categories. Cronenberg's version of The Fly was nominated under the science fiction category, although it did not make the top ten. It was also on the ballot for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills, a list of America's most heart-pounding films. The film had a fairly substantial impact upon its release. The famous tagline, "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid." has since been used in countless films, television shows, and other media --so much so, in fact, that many people are unaware that the phrase originated with The Fly. The line was also on the ballot for AFI's 100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes. Sequel The sequel is The Fly II (1989). Cronenberg has said that the stories in his films have definitive beginnings and endings, and he has never considered making a sequel to one of his own films, although others have made sequels to Cronenberg films, including Scanners (1981). The Fly II was directed by Chris Walas, the man behind the makeup and creature effects of both films, and is a direct continuation of The Fly. It features Veronica Quaife giving birth to Brundle's mutant son before dying, and focuses on the Bartok company's attempts to get the Telepods working again. However, due to certain controversial plot points (such as the death of Veronica in the film's prologue), a more generic monster-movie tone, and the fact that Cronenberg considered the story he'd begun to already be completed, the sequel was not well-received by critics and/or fans of the series. The only actor to return for the sequel was John Getz as an embittered Stathis Borans. Veronica Quaife appears briefly in the film, and is played by Saffron Henderson, since Geena Davis declined to reprise the role. Jeff Goldblum appears in archival footage of Seth Brundle in two scenes, including the post-teleportation interview segment that was deleted from the first film, but which was put to good use for the sequel. Interestingly enough, an early treatment for a sequel, written by Tim Lucas, involved Veronica Quaife dealing with the evils of the Bartok company. Brundle's consciousness had somehow survived within the Telepod computer, and the Bartok scientists had enslaved him and were using him to develop the system for cloning purposes. Brundle becomes able to communicate with Veronica through the computer, and he eventually takes control of the Bartok complex's security systems to gruesomely attack the villains. Eventually, Veronica frees Brundle by conspiring with him to reintegrate a non-contaminated version of his original body. Cronenberg endorsed this concept at the time. Geena Davis was open to doing a sequel (and only pulled out of Fly II because her character was to be killed in the opening scene), while Goldblum was not (although he was okay with a cameo), and this treatment reflects that. However, a later treatment written by Jim and Ken Wheat was used as the basis for the final script, written by Frank Darabont. Mick Garris also wrote a treatment, with elements incorporated into the final film. The Fly — The Opera On 2 July 2008 the opera The Fly by Howard Shore to a libretto by David Henry Hwang premiered at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris with Cronenberg as director and Plácido Domingo conducting. The US premiere was 7 September 2008 at the Los Angeles Opera.LAOpera information about cast and production dates Remake On 23 September 2009, it was announced David Cronenberg planned a remake of the film.David Cronenberg Remaking His Remake of The Fly? Merchandise A 6-inch figure of "Brundlefly" was created by McFarlane Toys for their Movie Maniacs line in 2000. Also, a 15-inch polystone statue of "Brundlefly" was made by "Sideshow Collectibles" in 2008. References External links * * * * * The Fly at MetaCritic *A Misdiagnosed Case of Insectivitis : The Fly (1986) review by Noel Tanti Category:1986 films Category:1980s horror films Category:1980s science fiction films Category:American science fiction horror films Category:American tragedy films Category:Psychological thriller films Category:English-language films Category:Mad scientist films Category:Science fiction horror films Category:Biopunk films Category:Film remakes Category:Films based on short fiction Category:Films directed by David Cronenberg Category:20th Century Fox films Category:The Fly